The Folk Of The Hills

I write this with appologies to Rudyard Kipling who did the first part in his book,

Ask now days about the people Of The Hills and most folk answer,huh?

Ask about fairies and perhaps they'll laugh, describing teeny tiny sprites with gauzy dresses, little wands and butterfly wings.. Sweet as suger and inofencive as butterflys.

HUMPH! Teeny tiny wands and foolishness. Nothing to em'. Sugar in water.

That's no thing close to themselves. Butterfly wings and gauzies! HA! I think NOT!

Imposters, preposterous- invented by adults to amuse their children. Imposters without Power. Pretenders to mask the fears of their inventors.
Butterfly wings indeed!
Haven't i seen The Seelie Court ride out from Tintagle for Hy-Brasil in the very teeth of a southwest gale? The spray crashing up the cliffs as high as the castles looming walls.
They come riding on the Horses of the Hills, straight into the boil of clouds and stinging spray. Out They'd come screaming like gulls, and the wind would blow them a good mile inland before they could turn the horses heads back into the wind.

It was magic. Magic as deep and strong and perilous as ever Merlin made.

They rode down to the sea in the middle of the blast. with the wind whipping the tops of the waves to foam and spray, and the Mermaids singing the storm up higher. The slate grey waves heaving and running with green fire.
The Horses of the Hills would canter from wave top to wave top their moon coats shinning. Picking their way by the flashes of lightning.
The Folk laughed as wild as the storm itself. The Knights of The Court shook their silver spears and green fire ran up the shafts and flashed off of the points.
All of them singing and laughing. Riding into the storm, laughing. Their eyes silver bright and gleaming like cat's eyes. Beautiful. beautiful every one of them.
I watched till they were out of sight. Not even the glow of their glamour left. Only the Ocean still flinging waves and spray against the cliffs to the tops of the castle walls.
As I watchedthe castle faded, dimmed, from the mighty light bedecked walls and towers of the Host of The Air. Back, back into what most ordinairy folk see. Ruined walls and dark fallen stone. No horn call echoing with laughter, empty. Empty now until the turning of the season.

Until then Tintagle bides alone with the crash of the sea and memories.

Beautiful and wild. The People Of The Hills are beautiful and wild.

Not like angels. No, not them. They are to stark, to wild, to dire to be angels.
They bear a terrible beauty that will tear your heart and haunt your waking and sleeping dreams.
Not evil either, as some would have you believe. Not evil, only...Other.

It is this Otherness that makes your soul uneasy. For there is a silence at their center. A silence that rings with clear water, the murmer of wind and rain and snow on stone. A silence of leaf and deep woods wrapped with twilight. The silence of Natures great mysteries of Oak, Ash and Thorn. That at Their Center.